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US stock index futures were slightly lower this morning (spy -0.1%), but remained near record levels. Investors have taken cues from earnings reports of industrial heavyweights General Electric and Honeywell.

What Is Moving the Markets

(Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures were slightly lower on Friday, but continued to hover around record levels, as investors took cues from earnings reports of industrial heavyweights General Electric and Honeywell.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As part of its review of Amazon's agreement to buy Whole Foods, the Federal Trade Commission is looking into allegations that Amazon misleads customers about its pricing discounts, according to a source close to the probe.

(Reuters) - General Electric Co's profit fell nearly 60 percent in the second quarter, largely due to the sale of its appliances business, but cash flow rose, sales topped expectations and its shares were slightly lower.

LONDON (Reuters) - A 14 billion pound ($18 billion) class action lawsuit against MasterCard for allegedly overcharging more than 45 million people in Britain over a 16-year period was blocked from proceeding by a judge, MasterCard said on Friday.

(Reuters) - A secretive U.S. government panel has objected to at least nine acquisitions of U.S. companies by foreign buyers so far this year, people familiar with the matter said, a historically high number that bodes poorly for China's overseas buying spree.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese courier ZTO Express and the underwriters of its New York stock market listing have been sued by a U.S. pension fund that alleges the firm exaggerated its profit margins to lure investors into its $1.4 billion initial public offering.

Headlines ripped across social media - 'the Russians admit that Trump and Putin may have met more than 3 times' - sparking an instant 'I told you so' from the 'left' proving the conspiracy of collusion is correct. However, we note that the source of this new story, Russian Foreign Minister Sergie Lavrov, compared these conversations to "children mingling at a kindergarten," adding "maybe they met in the toilet too."

"When you are bought by your parents to a kindergarten do you mix with the people who are waiting in the same room to start going to a classroom?

I remember when I was in that position I did spend five or ten minutes in the kindergarten before they brought us to the classroom."

As a reminder, while the White House didn't use this analogy to explain press reports of a second, undisclosed Trump-Putin conversation at the G20 meeting in early July, it fits.

"There was no 'second meeting' between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner. The insinuation that the White House has tried to 'hide' a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd," a White House Official said.

And now it seems Lavrov is piling on to Western media's constant efforts to paint the relationship one way, adding:

"They might have met even much more than just three times,"

"After the dinner was over...I was not there...President Trump apparently went to pick up his wife and spent some minutes with P ...

By now most of us are fed up with hearing apocalyptic warnings of the coming VIX disaster when all the naïve short sellers will be squeezed in an epic 2008 style equity crash. Either you buy this argument, or you don't. No sense wasting too much more time on it. I am of the opinion that for all the uninformed XIV buyers (the short VIX ETF), there are stacks of VXX longs desperately trying to catch the next great VIX rise. But, who knows? I might be wrong, and I definitely am not privy to the extent of institutional equity index volatility selling, so maybe there truly is a massive weak short position whose comeuppance will soon be laid bare for everyone to see.

But yesterday I had dinner with a buddy who passed along some interesting information that caught me by surprise. He is a unique individual. A former derivatives broker who didn't trade with pension funds and other typical institutional clients, but instead specialized in high net worth individuals and non-traditional corporations. His clients could definitely be described as sophisticated, but with an entrepreneurial, non-traditional flare.

He still keeps in contact with his old shop, and he told me what the brokers are experiencing. Across the board, clients are engaging in volatility selling strategies. And although they are shorting some stock index volatility, they are not limiting themselves to equities.

He described an endemic pattern of these sophisticated clients shorting gold vol, euro vol, bond vol - any listed options, these guys are shorting them. Take gold for example. They pick a three month option, and with gold trading here at 1245, they sell the 1145 put while simultaneously selling the 1345 call. Lever up the position, collect the premium, and let the quiet markets pad ...

Dennis Rodman will be disappointed to learn that the US is set to ban all citizens from traveling to North Korea, according to two agencies that operate tours there. Koryo Tours and Young Pioneer Tours said the ban would be announced on 27 July to come into effect 30 days later, the BBC reported. "After the 30-day grace period any US national that travels to North Korea will have their passport invalidated by their government." The ban comes one month after US student Otto Warmbier died following his imprisonment by the Kim regime.

China-based Young Pioneer Tours, which had taken Warmbier to North Korea, and Koryo Tours said the ban will come into force on July 27 - the anniversary of the end of the Korean War - with a 30-day grace period. Koryo Tours added that the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang, which handles consular affairs for the United States in the North, informed it of the ban, but did not say how long it would last. The U.S. embassy in the South Korean capital, Seoul, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rowan Beard said that the 30-day grace period would "give leeway for any [Americans] currently in the country as tourists or on humanitarian work". Simon Cockerill, of Koryo Tours, said: "It remains to be seen what the exact text is, but the indication is it's just a straight up ban on Americans going." Mr Cockerill told the BBC the agency would still conduct tours and take Americans until the ban came into effect.

Additionally, Rowan Beard of Young Pioneer Tours, told the BBC the embassy was urging all US nationals to depart immediately. He said the embassy was trying to check on the number of US tourists left in the country.

For now there has been no official confirmation from the US: the state department continues to have an alert dated 9 May strongly warning US citizens not to travel to North Korea. ...

Gold prices gained modestly Friday, looking to add to what has been the longest winning streak for the yellow metal in some two months as the dollar remained under pressure against the euro in particular.

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